Pets by Vickie Vertiz

A mash-up of public-domain footage from the Internet Archive by Kenji Liu.

Poet Vickie Vertiz reads the poem “Pets” from her book Swallows (Finishing Line Press, 2013), available at tinyurl.com/swallowsbook

Coelacanth by Charlotte Henson

A new poetry film by Rachel Laine is always worth waiting for. This one features a poem and recitation by UK poet Charlotte Henson.

He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

Film by Gianni Marini; voice by Paul Buchanan. This is the poem also known as “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

According to the Wikipedia, the poem was featured in an episode of the BBC television series Ballykissangel, where it was recited by one of the characters.

Humming Bird by D. H. Lawrence

http://vimeo.com/61407931

In a blog post introducing this video, Nic S. writes:

I get such a kick out of people putting their creations out there for free non-commercial use by others. This happened thanks to generous Vimeo user, Equiloud, who has a clips channel offering his amazing video creations for free download and Sound Cloud user Flute Ninja doing the same. The reading itself was already up at Pizzicati of Hosanna.

Silent Scene by J.P. Sipilä

Themes of alienation and belonging percolate through this experimental videopoem by the Finnish artist and poet J.P. Sipilä. The music is by Machifabriek and Samuli Sailo, and Roomet Jakapi contributed what Sipilä calls sound poems.

This is a featured video at London Poetry Systems, where Henry Stead wrote: “The balance and subtlety of the non-verbal’s relationship with the verbal is extremely powerful — a truly cross-media palette in the hands of a fine artist.” On his website, Sipilä observes: “In poetry there’s something left unsaid. In music there’s something left unheard. In film there’s something left unseen.”

The lyricline.org blog posted “Poetry & Film: statement by J.P. Sipilä” last year, which is worth quoting for additional context here:

What I do is videopoetry. It has a somewhat different approach to film and poetry than poetry film. I see poetry films as visual and kinetic illustrations of certain poems. But as far as videopoetry is concerned, video and sound are not mere reflections of certain poems, but a puzzle or juxtaposition of the three elements (video, sound and text). As videopoet Tom Konyves says: “Videopoetry is a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of text with images and sound. In the measured blending of these 3 elements, it produces in the viewer the realization of a poetic experience.”

A good videopoem creates a new overall poetic experience from the three elements used. For me the video is the paper and screen is the mouth of my poetry.

Sound and visual aspects have always had a huge effect on my poetry. I usually read poetry while listening music and when I see a piece of art I somehow automatically start thinking a story or a feeling behind it. Using video as a medium for my poetry was a step that was just waiting to be taken.

Requiem auf Georg Trakl (Requiem on Georg Trakl) by Sigrun Höllrigl

This Swoon film is a production of the Vienna-based videopoetry group Art Visuals & Poetry, who write:

“Requiem on Georg Trakl” is a political movie. The death metaphors in the poetry of Georg Trakl are interpreted as visions of the deads of first and second World War. The movie is about the poet as a visionary and outcast of society. The artist stays lonely because he has another view of reality – he “sees” in another reality.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

This is O wild goose da muller by Carmen PG Granxeiro:

Videoarte. Tres formas de escoitar. Tres formas de entender.
Videoart. Three ways to listen. Three ways to understand.
Videoarte. Tres formas de escuchar. Tres formas de entender.

Oliver’s most famous poem has been made into numerous videos for the web, most of them dreck. But I shared one other that I liked, a film by Justin DeWaard, back in 2010.

Ode to My Body by Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class

This collaboratively written poem comes from Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class at the Maplewood Career Center in Ravenna, Ohio. It was animated by Adam Rechtenwald from a design by Eric Stearns, and is part of the 2009-2010 edition — Peace Stanzas — of the Wick Poetry Center’s Traveling Stanzas program.

Day by Dylan Townsend

A videopoem “following the rhythm of a day… shots from Dublin, Ireland and New York,” according to Irish filmmaker-poet Dylan Townsend. This is an excerpt from a longer, not-yet-released film called Shadowsmiths. See Townsend’s videos on Vimeo for more excerpts.

Cherry Tree by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson’s dreamy lyrics juxtaposed with footage of a woman restocking a vending machine. Emily Tumbleson notes:

Footage taken on a Canon 7D. Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses.

I am currently exploring the relationship between desire or aspiration, childhood nostalgia, and social or cultural context.

Flowers by Tim Cumming

Tim Cumming‘s description at Vimeo is worth quoting in full:

A new film poem by Tim Cumming written on a walk from Hampstead Heath station to the Steeles in Belsize Park where he was offered snuff laced with cocaine and heard the story of Moll King, good mixer of Georgian London, a famous bawd and the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. Includes footage of witch dolls, amulets, mandrakes and more from the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, birds on the wire at Bodmin, Lord Byron and the waters of the Thames from Woolwich Dockyard, the paintings of Austin Osman Spare from the 2010 exhibition at the Cuming Museum in south London, 8mm archive film of The Towers in Corfe Mullen in the 1960s and wooden figurines carved in the 1980s by the hand of Peter Cumming.

Landing Under Water, I See Roots by Annie Finch

A beautiful and, to my mind, highly effective book trailer for Spells: New and Selected Poems by Annie Finch, due out this month from Wesleyan University Press. U.K. animator Suzie Hanna describes their creative process in a note at Vimeo:

The film was made through a Transatlantic collaborative shared process. Annie sent her voice recording to me and I responded with clips of tests and animatics which I adjusted, extended or dumped in response to her reactions.

For the text of the poem (and audio of Finch’s reading), see poets.org.